President Donald Trump may have just given special counsel Robert Mueller’s obstruction-of-justice investigation an inadvertent boost.
On Saturday, Trump defended his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, following news that Flynn had pled guilty to one count of making false statements to investigators during an interview in January about his contacts with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak during the transition period.
“I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI,” the president tweeted on Saturday. “He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!”
Flynn was forced to resign as national security adviser in February, when news surfaced that Flynn had spoken to Kislyak about US sanctions on Russia on December 29 — the same day that the sanctions were imposed by President Barack Obama.
Trump told reporters at the time that he had been forced to fire Flynn because he had misled Vice President Mike Pence about those conversations. But the White House gave no indication at the time that it knew Flynn had lied to the FBI in a January interview about those conversations — a federal crime that Flynn pleaded guilty to on Friday.
“I fired him because of what he said to Mike Pence,” Trump said during a press conference on February 16.
He continued: “Very simple. Mike was doing his job. He was calling countries and his counterparts. So, it certainly would have been OK with me if he did it. I would have directed him to do it if I thought he wasn’t doing it. I didn’t direct him, but I would have directed him because that’s his job.”
Trump’s tweet on Saturday appears to indicate that Trump was aware Flynn had lied to the FBI when he departed the administration in February.
It also seems out of line with what a person close to White House counsel Don McGahn told the New York Times on Friday, which is that when former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates warned him about Flynn in January, she did not mention that Flynn had committed a federal crime.
If Trump knew that Flynn was in the FBI’s crosshairs when he asked former FBI Director James Comey, whom he later fired, to consider “letting Flynn go” the day after Flynn resigned, that could dramatically bolster the obstruction case federal prosecutors are building against him.
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"Just unreal": Trump's latest tweet about Flynn indicates he's either "utterly clueless about his own jeopardy" or "truly believes he is beyond accountability," experts say https://t.co/hDcwke2e5m
— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) December 2, 2017
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